It’s over.   The FCC, which voted to approve the merger between satellite radio firms XM and Sirius two weeks ago, finally released its formal report on the case on Tuesday, ending the drama 505 days after the firms submitted their application to the Commission.

The episode was not the FCC’s finest hour.  The agencies once-vaunted “shot clock” — by which the FCC pledged to decide on mergers within 180 was left in shreds, with the counter going around almost three times before the circus finally ended.   Even at that, XM and Sirius managed to claw their way to approval only by making an (ever-longer) series of “voluntary” commitments:  including offering “a la carte” programming, capping prices for 36 months, making 8% of its capacity available to others to non-commercial and other entities, and extending service to Puerto Rico.   Even more was being considered when the music stopped, including a proposal to require all satellite radio receivers to have built-in HD broadcast tuners as well. (Apparently, there was concern that broadcasters would be frozen out of the audio market, in which they hold a market share of about 96 percent).

This regulatory free-for-all contrasts with the approach taken by the Department of Justice, which — after a fact-specific inquiry, approved the merger –  without conditions – five months ago.

This difference is more than a one-off burp, some momentarily loss of focus, over at the FCC.  The difference is a long-standing  one.  The statutory changes, and institutional culture, of the two agencies is vastly different.  The DOJ, is charged with enforcing competition laws, using a fairly well-accepted set of guidelines and economic principles.  And, for all its faults, its considerations  tend to be economic and factual in nature.   The FCC, by contrast, is a political animal, besieged – and often co-opted – by competing industries and interests.   And its statute allows it to go beyond questions of competition and consumer choice to open-ended and undefined inquiries as to what is in the “public interest.”

The problem is not a new one.   Former Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth has long railed against what he has called the FCC’s “policy exploits masquerading as merger reviews.”

Rather than another round of reform of the FCC’s merger processes, the answer is to scrap the FCC’s merger review authority entirely.   The effects of mergers on consumers and competition are sufficiently, and best, weighed by the competition authorities.  Broader public interest factors — if those can ever be defined — are better addressed in a broader policy context, not in the hothouse atmosphere of a merger review.

Don’t expect the FCC to be stripped of its role anytime soon, however.   The sad reality is that, while most everyone who has seen an FCC merger review up close knows the problems, after it’s over no one has an interest in fixing it.   The newly-christened Xm Sirius certainly has no dog in that fight.  CEO Mel Karmazin no doubt hopes he will never go through an FCC merger review again.  Moreover, for most firms, FCC merger authority may be just as likely to be a useful weapon against competitors as a threat to their own plans.

So despite the XM Sirius debacle, expect the circuses to go on.  And on.   And on.

Faithful readers will recall that, several months ago, I penned a 7-part “Media Metrics” series that took a hard look at the health of the media marketplace. Today, the Progress & Freedom Foundation is releasing a greatly expanded version of these essays that I have put together with my PFF colleague Grant Eskelsen. In this 100-page special report, “Media Metrics: The True State of the Modern Media Marketplace,” we begin by noting that heated debates about the state of the media marketplace continue to rage in Washington, and opinions seem to range from grim to outright apocalyptic. As we note on pg. 1:

Many people—including a large number of legislators and regulators—argue that America’s media marketplace is in a miserable state. Some claim that citizens lack choice in media outlets and that options are just as scarce as ever. Others believe that media “localism” is dead or that many groups or niches go underserved because of a lack of true “diversity” in media. Others argue that the market is hopelessly over-concentrated in the hands of a few evil media barons who are hell-bent on force-feeding us corporate propaganda. And still others say that the quality of news and entertainment in our society has deteriorated because of a combination of all of the above. It all sounds quite troubling, but is any of it true?

After taking an objective look at the true state of America’s media marketplace, we conclude that such pessimism is unwarranted. Indeed, a careful review of the facts reveals that—contrary to what those media critics suggest—we have more media choice, more media competition, and more media diversity than ever before. Indeed, to the extent there was ever a “golden age” of media in America, we are living in it today. The media sky has never been brighter and it is getting brighter with each passing year. We come to this conclusion by looking beyond the rhetoric that has for too long governed debates about media in American and providing a comprehensive look at a variety of media sectors such as audio, video, print and online media. Our survey contains over 70 charts and exhibits illustrating facts and figures on such diverse topics as advertising revenue, company market share, audience trends, and areas of growth in the sector. We will also aim to periodically updated the report to reflect the rapidly evolving media industry.

We encourage readers to provider input about how to improve and expand the report going forward in an attempt to refine and improve the metrics. And we look forward to future debates on this subject–debates that we hope will be guided by facts instead of fanaticism and by evidence instead of emotion. The hyperbolic rhetoric, shameless fear-mongering, and unsubstantiated claims that have driven policy debates in recent years have no foundation in reality and should be rejected as the debate over media policy continues.

This and future installments of “Media Metrics: The True State of the Modern Media Marketplace” will be available on the PFF website at www.pff.org/mediametrics. I have also embedded the entire document below as a Scribd file so that those interested in the topic can peruse the report immediately.